A Tender Date, A Little Ghosting, Part One

 

My date with Thoughtful Guy last Sunday was so lovely, even if the naming was a little premature. We met on my Favorite Woodland Trail. I instantly felt comfortable with him. By coincidence, we both wore pink. I saw a fellow hiker smiling to herself as she passed us. We were CUTE. I took the perfect selfie of us with the trail and bright trees and was sooooo excited that he’s out as poly and I could post it! Probably even tag him!

I had wondered if the trouble with past folks hadn’t been the poly at all, but the closet! This sweet connection seemed like a good way to find out.

Telling Rainbow Pal about him earlier in the week, I said “I listened to him talk about bringing his five partners home for Christmas. It kinda made me want to join him like a cult.”

(I’m not saying polyamory is a cult. I’m saying that there are tendencies there, just like there are with any ingroup that involves humans and our tender need to belong. I definitely have a culty relationship to poly. I’ll say more about that in Part Two.)

Since I’ve committed to the (Maybe long! Maybe futile! Definitely worth it!) quest for Actual Boyfriend Guy, I’m not sure why I swiped right on such a very poly character, but I absolutely could not resist the face. In a long text thread before the date, he said he was very concerned, rightfully so, that I was describing myself as “probably poly.” (And that was probably rounding up. Today I’m landing on the admittedly wishy-washy “monagamish.”) He didn’t just want to be a fling, he said. “Don’t worry,” I told him, “We’ve already flung.”

(Why are we talking like this before we even met in person? The word “lovebombing” has whispered through my brain all week, though I don’t think it’s fair. Attraction. Hope. Affinity. Fate?)

Back to us being cute on Favorite Trail, it was humid and buggy and I really wanted to take him home, so we didn’t walk far. Back at the trailhead, as we parted to go to our respective cars, I kissed him on the cheek and felt giddy and sexy and joyful.

Once I had him in my apartment, we kissed for real and it was perfect. A kiss like this is a miracle all on its own. A lifetime worth of goodness. Soft, wet, firm, emphatic. I was breathless.

“Okay, I’m ready to join your team,” I gushed. “Contact HR. Send me the packet. When is orientation?”

(I’m just gonna stop and notice that Thoughtful Guy shares a name with a famous cult leader. It’s not relevant, but it a little bit is.)

Upstairs, he was INTOXICATING. As we cuddled, kissed, grinded, looked for tickle spots, I went from swoon to swoon. I felt both urgent and stunned, an almost debilitating bliss. This guy. <3

He did a thing no other lover has ever done—he treated the fat at my waist as part of the hotness! He grabbed and kneaded and I groaned with delight and surprise. More of this please!

“Just lay there and be you,” he said, and I did. He was like a day at the beach and I lay there, we lay there, still and sunny.

The Heated Blankets (Love, Shame, and Bleeding All the Time, Part Two)

 

On Wednesday morning, I went in for surgery for my misbehaving hoo-ha. They were going to take pictures inside my uterus, clear out some tissue and send it for biopsy, and put in an IUD to hopefully regulate (Or even stop!) the rogue periods.

Pre-op was deep vulnerability practice. First, they have you take off all your clothes and get in your hospital gown, the classic butt-revealer. Mine was an off-sky-blue with an emotionally neutral geometric pattern that definitely did not stay in my brain. And then, I was chilly, and a nurse who called everyone “love” asked if I would like a heated blanket. Of course I would!

She put one heated blanket underneath my head and another over me. The tenderness, the warmth, and the kindness got me all undone, a pure Miranda July movie moment if there ever was one. The nurse dimmed the light above my head and I stared up at the bright rectangle of the light in front of the dimmed one. Relaxed by the warmth and care I guess, my spirit shifted to my first walk along the river with The Shy One, that moment of innocence and uncertainty, before we’d had the chance to break each other’s hearts twice. “We’re on your time,” he’d said, and I took his hand and turned us toward home.

I guess the heated blankets (I accidentally typed “hearted.”) got through all my layers of grief and hurt and loss-of-face and loss-of-hope and let me inhabit that moment more fully than I’ve inhabited any of our so-beautiful-I-don’t-know-what to-do-with-them memories. Fat drippy tears overflowed and I sniffed discreetly so no one in the pre-op room would worry.

These tears were different from all the other ones I’ve cried this past month-they weren’t the bottomless, howling, laying-on-the-floor grief of the first days post breakup or the let’s-listen-to-the-song-and-get-some-sorrow-out of the calmer next few weeks. These good, tender tears were a glimpse of what was real and good and blessedly, healthfully over.

The wait was long and the blankets cooled. My teary release turned to anxious boredom. I woke up from anesthesia to navigate a once-again bloody crotch, this time maybe productively so. My hands were covered in blood for the millionth time in these messy months, and I was glad I’d caught the nurse’s name so I could call out for a fresh pad. Someday, no more pads. Maybe soon.

As I recovered from surgery, more waves of emotion came in, darker and angrier and harder to write about. Trauma, drugs wearing off, new hormones, ongoing loneliness and hurt made me prickly and harsh for a few days, until the next wave of grace came, but that’s another story.